Trump signs new executive order to limit birthright citizenship

US President Donald Trump has once again taken steps to limit birthright citizenship. A similar move has failed in the country's Supreme Court. This time, he has signed two new executive orders, one to narrow the scope of birthright citizenship and the other to curb so-called "birth tourism," or the trend of coming to the United States to give birth to a child to obtain citizenship.

Under the new order, children born in the United States will no longer automatically receive US citizenship in certain cases. In particular, if both parents of the child are non-citizens and one of them is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, an official of a foreign government, has attempted to obtain citizenship through fraud, or lives in a US territory where citizenship is not recognized by federal law, then the child will not receive the benefits of birthright citizenship.

While signing the order at the White House, Trump said that this change should have been made long ago and that his administration is now moving forward with its implementation. At the same time, he criticized the US Supreme Court for overturning an earlier decision on citizenship by birth.

The second executive order bans 'birth tourism'. The Trump administration claims that many foreign nationals come to the United States as tourists and give birth to children so that the child automatically becomes a US citizen.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said that children born through this process can later enjoy various rights and benefits reserved for US citizens. According to him, the president has the authority to take such measures under existing immigration law.

Trump claims that hundreds of thousands of children have been born in the United States through 'birth tourism'. However, according to the non-partisan research organization 'Immigration Policy Institute', about 22 to 26 thousand children are born in this way every year. In addition, government statistics say that the number of children born to mothers with foreign addresses was about 9,600 in 2024.

It is worth noting that Trump issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship shortly after taking office for a second term in 2025. However, in the face of legal challenges, the matter went to the Supreme Court, and the court ruled that the right to birthright citizenship will remain in place under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

According to Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, the president may have some authority to restrict the entry of foreigners into the United States for the purpose of giving birth. However, he believes that the president does not have the constitutional authority to change the decision of whether a child will be recognized as a citizen after birth in the United States through an executive order. In his words, birth tourism is a very small phenomenon compared to the total number of births in the United States each year.